From Curt: Five Denizens from Mork Borg (33 points)

Hi There,

Kawe from Westfalia Miniatures has been a Challenge supporter from pretty much the beginning, in fact he was a participant himself, creating some terrific work for visitors to enjoy. As many know, Westfalia began focusing exclusively on Napoleonics, then moved on to pulp subjects, and now concentrates primarily on dark fantasy and sci-fi.

I always try to jump in to support each of Westfalia's Kickstarters and these five figures are from one of their earlier releases. They're lovely boutique minis sculpted by Boris Woloszyn and themed around the wonderfully strange and creepy world of Mork Borg. For a few years I've been GMing some out-of-town friends using Mork Borg and the Roll20 app. We've been having a lot of fun with it as the system is very rules-lite, encouraging on-your-toes creativity, which often makes for some very funny (and bloody) game sessions.

Anyway, here are five denizens from the grim world of Mork Borg:

The Gutterborn Scum

'C'mon my pretties! There's work to be done...'

The Heretical Priest

This fella looks like he's been huffin' a bit too much from the 'mystical censer'.

'Skelly Jo'

'What? The horns are too much, eh?'

Wrat

'Come now, let's all sing the chorus together...'

Wretched Royalty

'The world may be descending into rack and ruin but I'm still on the top of the heap.'

As to points, four of these five are over 40mm so I'll claim 7 points for each of those, giving me a total of 33 points.

I'll use the 'Wretched Royalty' to move from Gluttony to The Ninth Circle: 'Treachery'.

I'll also claim a Squirrel Point for this crew of degenerates.

Aaaand 5 skulls for Barks.

Thanks for dropping by!

- Curt

From Millsy:

Yikes! These are weird and creepy enough to keep John Blanche awake at night!

They're all spectacular mate but if I had to pick a favourite it would be the Wretched Royalty. I love the saturated blue/greens paired with the muted palette on the rest of the miniature and the face is just packed with character too.

33 Challenge points for your total! Keep em coming...

Cheers,
Millsy

From Curt: Adventurers for Mork Borg/Forbidden Psalm (45 Points)

Hi there!

I apologize in advance for monopolizing the blog with my submissions these past few days - I have a bunch of stuff that I was working on over the holiday break, but didn't get around to posting while I was minioniong, so I'm shamelessly taking advantage of the Snowlord's prerogative of being able to post on any day. 

In addition to all things root vegetable and vehicular, I've also been bitten by the Mork Borg / Forbidden Psalm bug, and so have here five hapless and homely mooks to fit that setting.

For those not in the know, Mork Borg is a Swedish designed RPG set in a comically grim, circling-the-drain, Scandinavian death metal world (in fact, there is a mechanic in the rules to count down the game sessions to its doomsday). The small format hardcover is a real treat, whose cutting edge design and layout has allowed it to scoop up eight Ennies this past year.

The Mork Borg mechanics are VERY minimalistic (only 4 stat lines for characters, and probably less than 10 pages of core rules) and as such are a doodle to get into. Character generation only takes a few minutes (which is a good as they usually get chopped up and/or eaten in fairly short order), and if you're too lazy to put in the time, you can simply use their online character generator (aptly titled, 'ScumBirther') to do the heavy lifting for you. At its core, Mork Borg is an open system, where the GM and players are encouraged to fill in the narrative with their own creativity.

Another great aspect to the rules is that their licensing is very permissive. The creators actively encourage adaptations and spin-offs of their core system. This generous licensing approach has created several creative spinoffs already, including 'Cy-Borg' (cyberpunk), 'The Last War' (Great War horror) and 'Forbidden Psalm' (Mork Borg tactical).  

Both 'The Last War' and 'Forbidden Psalm' are not true RPGs, but rather figure-based wargame-adventure systems similar to 'Rangers of Shadow Deep' and the ever-popular 'Frostgrave'. These Mork Borg spinoffs are great rules for a light, but frenetic night of gaming (and a low figure-count of only 5 in a party/faction). I've been running an online Mork Borg RPG campaign for some out-of-town friends, and hope to get some Forbidden Psalm games in with our local group soon. With this in mind, here is a faction for FS - five misbegotten adventurers, all destined, I'm sure, to come to a quick, nasty and sticky end. 

Nick the Pick

Witnail the Flail

Gavin the Glaive

Wesley the Weaver

and, Ishmael the Pickerel 

Knucklebones Miniatures has done a terrific job in capturing the oddball, comical and weirdly grotesque nature of the Mork Borg universe. In the setting, the 'heroes' are typically homely (if not hideous), but in an interesting way, and it gets even 'better' when you come across the baddies. Hopefully I'll have more Mork Borginess over the coming months.

Sorry for the rambling post! Hats off to those who persevered to the end. :)

Five adventurers for 25 points, plus another 20 for the Fantasy Set. 

- Curt

From TeemuL: As a Challenge Veteran, this post probably doesn't even make the Top 10 list of rambling posts, so it was easy to read. Partly because the game system sounds interesting, I guess I need to do some further investigation, simple rulesystems have their place and small figure count, too. The miniatures themselves are tried and tested Snowlord style, lots of colours, very smooth, but lots of contrast. It was a joy to have the master producer join our Thor's Day team.